Oct. 30, 2013:
The Elysian Resort:
This
is a Wyndham managed resort with Wyndham owning some of the units and
Worldmark also having a few. There's also several privately owned units
that are rented out or occupied by residents. It's on the east side of
the island on Cowpet Bay and about 2 miles from Red Hook. All of the
Wyndham units are studios---either double studio (with 2 double beds and
a kitchenette); king studio (like the double only with a king bed);
studio parlor (which we got with the Queen Murphy bed and full kitchen);
and the studio parlor loft (like ours only with a lofted bedroom and
almost impossible to reserve). I had thought about reserving the parlor
and a king bedroom for Ken and me and having them adjoining, but then
we would have had double the energy fee of $22/day and they probably
would have been at opposite ends of the resort with the way things were
going. As it turned out, I really liked the studio parlor. It was
quite large, nicely renovated, the murphy bed was very comfortable and
folded up and down easily, there were place settings for 4, even had a
dishwasher, the patio had a table with 2 chairs and a lounge chair on it
(good for drying our wet suits every day since we didn't have a washer
and drier). Would have been nice to have a higher unit with a better
view, but at least we got to stay in the same rooms all 7 and 9 nights
(2 reservations for the kids and 3 for us with one of ours being a
Worldmark reservation, the other 2 being Wyndham). I had tried the
Wyndham VIP trick of cancelling and rebooking our reservation within
the 60 day mark to save half the points, but the cancelled
reservations didn't come right back up. I had a Worldmark bonus time
reservation as a back up in case Wyndham didn't offer those days again.
Fortunately I was able to pick up 6 of our 9 nights at a later
time for half the regular Wyndham points and kept the Worldmark
reservation for the other 3 nights. I didn't play that game with Angie
and Josh's reservations. I would say the studios were worth the full
point price anyway now that we've stayed there.
Murphy
bed behind couch. Couch was surprisingly comfortable for sitting on,
too. Kitchen to the left behind me, hallway to door and bathroom behind
me to the right.
The
small but adequate bathroom area---separate toilet and shower area to
left. No tub. Closet with safe to immediate left although safe was
locked and they couldn't open it.
Nicely equipped kitchen with full sized appliances, granite counter tops, glass tiled back splashed.
From sliding door to patio towards kitchen .
from kitchen area with Murphy bed folded down. Still lots of room to get around.
Ken
cooking breakfast. Murphy bed folded up (rather sloppily!). Good
view of front door; bathroom to the right behind kitchen.
View from our room (W149)
View from Angie and Josh's room (L 107) Tennis court below them, main office to the left with the green awning.
Ken
and I went to the main office in the morning and officially check-in.
Turned out we weren't charged the energy fee for either room for the
night of the 29th. We also asked about free internet for VIP and she
actually gave us the password! I don't know if that's a Wyndham VIP
privilege, but it paid to ask! (Internet service wasn't the greatest,
but it kept us connected to email and facebook.) We also verified we
wouldn't have to move 3 times and got beach towels for us and the kids.
Things were looking up!
Next thing on the agenda was
to find the grocery store. The little one in Red Hook that the kids
remembered had closed. So we went to one close to Red Hook---Food
Center. I found things to be even more expensive here then on Hawaii.
We did bring some stuff with us from home---like pancake mix and some
snacks, but still spent a fortune on sodas, cereals, milk, eggs, bacon,
etc. We ate most of our breakfasts in our rooms. Then ate lunch and
dinner out.
Then
it was time to hit the water! Angie and Josh told us how great the
snorkeling was right there at Cowpet and they are right! The
resort even has a bunch of "toys" for rent, but we didn't rent any.
It was a beautiful calm day for snorkeling Cowpet Bay!
This snapper was one of the first fishies to greet us.
Then some sort of wrasse,
around the point we came upon some great coral.
a parrotfish
Christmas tree worms growing on some coral
spiny urchin
a blue head wrasse
a "feather duster" worm
another type of snapper
a yellow stripe snapper in a graveyard of shells.
a damselfish with lavender coloring instead of blue
colorful corals
general view around the point
blue surgeonfish or tang?
there is a school of these guys who like to follow snorkelers.
(I'm told these are Palometa
fish, a relative of the Pompano fish in Florida)
another type of coral--elkhorn
a school of squid
close up of squid
something scared them and they sprayed "ink" and took off.
tiny fish over coral
coming back around the point and looking towards the Elysian resort.
At
this point, my Canon D20 point and shoot underwater camera was acting
very strangely! It kept zooming on it's own. By the time I got out and
checked the battery compartment, it was too late. I'd drowned another
underwater camera. I don't open them at the beach, I clean them after
snorkeling, but I guess when you spend 3 and 4 hours at a time in the
water and days at a time, it takes a toll. But I wasn't about to be
without an underwater camera for the rest of my trip! On to research
who sells underwater cameras in St. Thomas! We tried Office Max and
K-mart---no success there. Decided to hit the internet and came up with
Royal Caribbean and Boolchards so we headed into Charlotte Amelia only
to find them closed already. But since we were there, we went to
Shipwreck Bar for a brew and dinner. It was quite good and the wait
staff was very nice---albeit Red Socks fans!
This
was also the night of the 6th game of the World Series. Our STL
Cardinals were in it playing the Boston Red Socks (again) so we wanted
to make sure we were around our rooms to watch it. So after dinner, we
made our way back to the "kids" room and shared a few more drinks while
attempting to watch the Cardinals game. We were down 2-3 in games won,
so needed this win. But after the Red Sox scored about 7 runs to our
none, we gave up and headed to the pool and Jacuzzi---it was too painful
to watch any more! Our boys lost, but they put up a much better
showing this year then last time we played them in the World Series! It
was made better by being in the warm pool and having a yummy
Mango Cruzan and pinacolada juice drink!
More trials and tribulations, but we're going to have a great time, damn it!!!
